


'til the end of the world (even if that happens to be tonight)

by SashaSea (SHCombatalade)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire Slayer, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 17:59:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11295834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SHCombatalade/pseuds/SashaSea
Summary: Neil buries his past in a pile of bones four miles west of Petrolia, mixing ash and old memories into the black sand of the Lost Coast.Two years later, in a locker room in Millport, his past catches up to him with a strong grip at both shoulders.





	'til the end of the world (even if that happens to be tonight)

**Author's Note:**

> me @ me: someday ur gonna write something that ISN'T a supernatural creature/magical au, but today is not that day
> 
> (Buffy the Vampire Slayer AU)

Neil buries his past in a pile of bones four miles west of Petrolia, mixing ash and old memories into the black sand of the Lost Coast.

Two years later, in a locker room in Millport, his past catches up to him with a strong grip at both shoulders.

The only thing that keeps him from fighting, from fleeing, from any number of instinctive reactions that have kept him alive all these years, is the way the man calls his name as he grabs him from behind. “Abram!” The voice is unfamiliar, but the name is not; it might be the one he was born with, he’s not sure anymore, but it’s the one he's worn like a comforting blanket for the majority of his life. No one has called him Abram since - Just since. “Settle down, Abram, it’s me!”

He turns around without any sharp objects in his hand, which is about as close as he gets to a polite response, and wishes he hadn’t. “Wymack.”

Neil’s never met David Wymack before, not in person - there had been a few conversations over the phone when he was younger, odd hours of the morning or night when Mary called to arrange details across the four continents, and a grand total of two letters before that went burned without reading - but he’s easy enough to recognize from Mary’s description.  _David is_ , she hovers a hand over the receiver, and the other over Neil’s hair. He’s eleven now, activated nearly a year ago, and sometimes she seems so sad when she looks at him (and he’s not even the youngest, he reminds her, but it only makes her sadder).  _David looks like the meanest son of a bitch you’ll ever meet, but you’ll trust him immediately_.

David Wymack is six and a half feet tall, and easily close to three hundred pounds of solid muscle; both of his arms are painted with jagged black tattoos from wrist to shoulder, and his face looks like it doesn’t know how to smile.

And Neil, well. Neil doesn’t know how to trust, but he still can’t help but trust him a little bit.

“You’ve been a hard man to find,” Wymack’s voice is friendly, but his face is grave. His entire demeanor screams the lofty disapproval of the Council, and it’s only the memory that he hasn’t been part of that world for even longer than Neil that has him sticking around for the end of the sentence. Mary used to tell him that Wymack was one of the good ones, maybe even one of the best ones – one of the ones that _cared_. It’s why he lost everything, in the end.

Tension coils low in his gut, a reminder that if Wymack is here then the others can’t be far behind. “Well congratulations,” he shrugs, an easy gesture that loosens the shirt around his arms and the ties that keep a knife strapped against the small of his back. Wymack isn’t a threat, but whoever comes next definitely will be. “You found me. Your prize is that you get to leave.”

“Great,” Wymack crosses his arms and leans back against the wall, just beyond Neil’s reach. “I’m parked out front. Grab your shit, Wesninski.” The name is a full body twitch, the scrape of rusted nails down his spine, and a flicker of remorse across Wymack’s not-smile. “Josten. Whatever the hell name you’re using nowadays.”

“I’m not—” Wymack raises a single eyebrow, and it’s so much like a gesture Mary would have given him that for a moment he almost wants to agree. “I’m not going with you,” he finishes through a glare that feels a good ten years too young for his face. He’s never been a child, not really, but somehow Watchers always make him childish.

The eyebrow arches a few degrees higher. “The fuck you aren’t.”

“What are you gonna do?” Wymack easily has fifteen inches and at least a hundred and fifty pounds on Neil, but he’s still nowhere in the vicinity of a fair fight; his white shirt is too threadbare to be hiding a gun in the waistband of his jeans, and unless the car he’s parked out front comes with the National Guard inside it there’s nothing he would be able to do against Neil. “Make me?”

Instead of a threat, he takes it as a taunt; all too often he forgets that Wymack is also a father. “Oh what, _now_ you’re embracing the whole deal? Sorry, Josten, you don’t get to pick and choose which parts of this you want.”

“Did the Council wipe your memories when they kicked you out? I didn’t get to _choose_ any part of this.” Sometimes, when things had been quiet for awhile, Neil would say something like that and Mary would pity him. Never that much, never enough, but whatever small amount necessary that would have her dragging him out of their hotel rooms and into a movie theater or a water park or any other mundane and unfamiliar childhood activity.

Wymack is not Mary.

Instead of pity, he rolls his eyes. “You’re right. You didn’t choose it. But, two years ago, you chose to turn your back on _the entire goddamn human race_ , so forgive me if I don’t break out a pity party and a pack of kleenex.” Anger rolls off Wymack in waves, a tangible presence that is nothing Neil hasn’t been spent a lifetime ignoring, but there’s just enough left in him to feel guilty about disappearing the way he did; he didn’t even walk away. Not really. Neil cleaned up his messes, and then he retired. It was the least he had earned.

“Most Slayers last three years.” It’s a statistic he knows all too well. There’s always a few that make it to a double digit mark, but they’re mostly legends and they mostly did it by dumb luck. Wymack knows this, but he doesn’t _understand_ ; Kayleigh made fifteen years before a freak accident took her out. Raised a kid, even. Her tenure lasted the entire length of Wymack’s career – it’s not like he ever had to face just how fleeting his charges could be. “I gave you twice that many before I was even old enough for the ritualistic torture ceremony.”

The corner of Wymack’s mouth twitches upwards. “She told you about the Cruciamentum.” Wymack was nearly removed from the Council the first time for refusing to go through with the ritual; probably would have been, had it not been revealed that his Slayer was already eleven weeks pregnant. The Watchers Council might be archaic and, at times, downright cruel, but they managed to draw a line just barely on the side of decency on certain matters.

“Of course she did.” Mary might have been assigned as Neil’s Watcher by the Council, but she was the closest thing he had to a mother – they tracked him down as a potential when he was barely a toddler, had him training with Mary as soon as he could run. They probably never expected him to get called up just three months after his tenth birthday, but no one could have imagined that the longest surviving Slayer could be taken out by a car accident, of all things. Mary might have only been his Watcher, but she was definitely one of the good ones. She had _cared_. Despite everything between them, Neil had respected Mary.

And Mary had respected Wymack.

Neil feels every muscle in his body go loose, feels the chemicals in his body evening out from fight or flight to stay and listen; he knows who his enemies are, human and otherwise.  Wymack isn’t one of them. “Why are you here, David?”

“I told you.” He must feel the change in the air because his arms uncross; the action makes him look almost smaller. He doesn’t block the doorframe anymore, just leans against it with one shoulder, and the stance puts him off balance enough that he might as well have cleared the path entirely. “I came for you.”

It’s a sentiment he’s been dreading since he started running – eight years ago, with the creatures of hell biting at their heels. Two years ago from the Council. Neil has been running from the first moment they knocked at the hotel door to tell him it was his time, but for once the idea of having been caught doesn’t send him into a panic. “And I told you, I’m not going with you.” He’s not particularly attached to the desert, but it’s the most normal he’s ever felt: advanced math. Track and field. There’s an old lady in the house next to the one he’s crashing in that brings him a zucchini bread every Sunday. “I don’t want to go back to that.”

Guilt, and perhaps regret, color the frown on Wymack’s face; Neil might not want to go back to his old life, but at least he’s got something to go back to. “I don’t care what you want,” but he says it like an apology. Like he cares, but also like he knows that people in their world don’t get to want. Neil wants to reply, something sharp like the weapons he’s not allowed to use on someone as human as Wymack, but he doesn’t get the chance – the next sentence punches beneath his ribs, a freight train into his lungs.

“Lord Kengo is dead.”

* * *

Palmetto State is a large campus, and blisteringly orange; from the very moment Wymack’s truck turns onto the main drive, Neil is overwhelmed. The main buildings – perhaps the original buildings, since it’s obvious the school has grown with the times – are mostly brick, but they seem to have leeched any of the red color that they originally held to reflect the myriad t-shirts and banners that surround them.

Neil loves it immediately.

“Now remember,” and Wymack sounds as gruff as he looks, both very and not at all, “You’re an actual student here, okay? I don’t know what you did to pass the time in Millport—”

“Multivariable calculus.”

The truck pulls to a stop outside of a low series of buildings behind the intramural sports fields, right against the shore of the lake; Neil can still see the main campus, but he can’t hear the bustle of students moving in. “You’re serious.” Neil’s answer is a slow nod – he’s not exactly proud of his grades, but anyone else would have reason to be. School was always something Mary drilled in as important, less for the classwork and more for the community it fostered; hunting grounds were easier to protect through familiarity. It just happened that he enjoyed certain aspects of it, and was more than good at others. The identification papers Wymack faxed back with the application were forgeries, but everything else – the grades, the letters of recommendation, the test scores – were all real. “Alright then.”

“So.” Two of the buildings have the dark, shuttered look of having been closed for the summer holidays, but the third is bright with lights and activity. At the sound of the diesel engine, the front door cracks open and a young man, older than Neil, leans out; his excited grin is negated by the shuttered expression of his eyes, the way he searches the tinted windows with suspicion before closing the door behind him. “Intramural sports?”

Wymack does grin this time, bright around his sunglasses. “We’re the Palmetto State lacrosse team.” Palmetto State doesn’t have a lacrosse team, and Neil tells him as much; Wymack ignores it. “Go Foxes.”

“I sort of thought you were joking about that.”

Neil follows Wymack out of the truck, and the young man at the door leans forward like maybe he’s going to approach before thinking better of it. He’s the sort of tall that probably had to grow into it, height coming long before coordination, but he’s old enough now to have an easy grace despite his size. “Sup, Coach,” he greets casually, and extends a fist; when Wymack doesn’t return the gesture, his grin widens and he seeks out Wymack’s hand with his own to bump them together. “He’s it?”

There’s nothing but fondness in the way Wymack eyes the hand gesture with disdain, like it’s something routine between them. “Unfortunately.”

“Huh. I sort of thought he’d be—”

“Bigger?” It’s not the first time someone has commented on Neil’s height – usually it’s a vampire, and usually it’s right before he kills them. He knows that he’s short, even for his age, and that it sometimes makes him hard to take seriously. But he’s also, no matter his size, very much capable of taking down monsters twice his size.

The man nods his head and offers the fist to Neil, who does accept the offer and knocks his own knuckles against the others. “Matt. It’s cool to meet you, man.” For the first time since moving to South Carolina – South Carolina, of all places. When Wymack had told him, that first night on the road, where they were going, Neil had wanted to laugh in his face at the joke. Palmetto was over 250 miles from the nearest Hellmouth, and rather quiet in regards to vampiric activity. It was, as far as Neil was concerned, a Slayer non-event. _Best place to hide,_ Wymack had told him. _From monsters **or** Watchers_. – Neil feels like the person he’s talking to doesn’t hate him.

“Yeah, same.” Matt seems like the sort of person who might actually play lacrosse, if their team was anything beyond an excuse to train together; he balances himself like someone who does more than casual activity, and the callouses on his hands don’t come from anything but contact fighting. Like Wymack, he’s got the personality where Neil wants to let his guard down. “I’m Neil.”

He'd had a dog once, as a child, a big mutt of a thing – half Saint Bernard _at least_ , all fur and teeth and wet, dripping grins, and he’d destroyed an entire set of plates by wagging his tail too hard – that stayed with them in Montreal; when Matt tilts his head, smile still in place, he reminds Neil of that dog. He seemed sweet and simple as well, until the darkness fell and the creatures came calling and that same mutt turned on them with all two hundred plus pounds of everything he had. “I know,” Matt says like he’d thought it would be obvious. “You’re sort of a big deal.”

Matt is a boxer, he comes to learn, who lost his father to drugs and his mother to a werewolf when he was seventeen; Wymack took him in and gave him a place, a purpose, a thing to fight when the frustration reached a boiling point of too much. His girlfriend, Dan, is more like Neil – she’s been with Wymack since she was a teen, and the first time she calls him ‘Dad’ in the same voice she addresses anyone else, no questions, Neil is suddenly taken back to another time entirely. They’re the opposite of Renee, quiet with her books – it goes unspoken, that Wymack’s been training her as a Watcher, for nearly four months, but it makes sense when he learns; he doesn’t trust Renee any more than he had the Council. Neil thinks Allison might be the bravest of all of them: the only thing she’s lost to the fight is what she was willing to give, learning the truth of the world and refusing to be a victim to it. She was the only one to come to Wymack and _ask_ for a place, instead of accepting an offer.

They’re all very, _very_ good at what they do. They’re also, unfortunately, entirely too human.

“They’re going to get themselves killed,” he says around a bloodied lip. It’s almost midterms, and also a full moon, and he’ll take to his grave the fact that it was a freshman in a blind panic that gave it to him instead of anything more sinister.

Andrew takes one look at him and smirks like he knows. “We could be so lucky.”

There’s a quiet sort of comfort in the way that Andrew refuses to admit that he cares – the first person Neil met when they arrived at Wymack’s small apartment was Nicky; he was so undeniably, effervescently _human_ that he seemed almost out of place. The second person he met was Aaron. Neil feels strange, befriending Aaron the way he has – Aaron is waiting for the day that Neil finally dies so he can take up a mantle he still doesn’t want, and otherwise finds no purpose, or even pleasure, among Wymack’s crowd. The only thing they’ve got in common is the target between their eyes and the ticking clock of an early death; it’s enough. Andrew was the shadow that surrounded them, watching their backs and clearing their path, that met Neil with a sharp punch to his solar plexus that had him down on his knees, gasping for breath.

“You,” he’d spat the word like the foulest curse he could imagine, unimpressed and uncaring; the amulet, disguised as a keychain, had clattered to the cement beside Neil. “You don’t die.”

The only thing Neil knows about Andrew with any certainty is that he always keeps his word.

“Yeah,” he grins against the pull of the healing cut; they’re on the roof again, like they are most nights now – in a rare moment of truth between them, Andrew admitted that he liked the roof because the height made him feel afraid and the stars made him feel safe. Neil likes the way that he can see a threat coming from over a half a mile away. “I can tell you really mean that.” There’s a matching amulet on each of their keyrings and a sachet in each of their dorm rooms, and protection charms were only as strong as the intent behind their making.

Andrew does not shrug. “They survived this long without you,” he speaks of the others with the same detachment he holds himself, us and them. “Don’t think you’re such hot shit, Neil. You are, quite literally, replaceable.”

* * *

It’s a calm, too early Saturday morning when Neil jerks awake.

From the bunk above him, he can hear Matt snoring heavily; across the room, Seth is a more quiet murmur of breath. The window is cracked to allow the October breeze entrance, though it does nothing to lessen the stifling stillness of a too small space occupied by three grown men – he thinks, at first, it was the cloying mugginess that woke him. And then he feels it again.

He doesn’t bother getting dressed. He’s in an old t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants cut off at the knee, and he forgoes shoes for the precious seconds it takes to retrieve a few stakes from the duffel beneath his bed. On his way out, he triple-locks the door.

There’s a vampire outside the building.

He calls the elevator up to their floor with the sole purpose of slamming the emergency stop button; the lights dim and the engine grinds to a halt, and Neil tip-toes for the staircase. It’s four flights of stairs down from the third floor, and three landings with blind turns – Neil skips the final turn by vaulting over the railing, landing in a practiced crouch at the bottom. From down here, the buzz at the back of his mind feels like his entire skull is vibrating. It’s the one that tells him something is coming, the one that feels like danger and adrenaline all at once. He takes that feeling, that rising tide of energy beneath his skin, and he opens the door to come face to face with a dead man.

“Hey Abram,” Kevin Day greets around the gross parody of a smile. “Can I come in?”


End file.
